


It's, Like, Magic or Something

by inkstainedcas (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Azazel is a dick, College AU, M/M, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Soulmates Castiel & Dean Winchester, Tattooed Castiel, but also fluff, cas is a ball of magic badassery and sunshine, dean doesn't know who tf he is yet, hunter!dean, it's gonna be a rollercoaster kids, warnings may be added in the future but none for now, witch!cas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-11-18 07:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11286363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/inkstainedcas
Summary: Dean’s the classic heart-throb with a complicated past, facing an uncertain future and an equally unsteady present.Cas is always balancing on the cusp of normal, the magic in his bones and a dark family secret barring him from an apple-pie life.When Dean first meets Cas, the wide-eyed, tattooed, outsider of a boy is downing a straight shot of vodka like it’s water. The second, he’s meditating in the middle of campus. It’s when Dean finds him with dried blood on his face and a mewling kitten in his hands that Dean decides there has to be a reason they keep meeting.





	1. Chapter 1

                Castiel isn’t exactly a party type of guy.

                In fact, he’s pretty sure he’s only been to one party in his entire high school career, and that’s only because Gabe threw one at their house during Cas’s junior year. His primary memories of that party involve complaining about the mess and confiscating at least 17 strangers’ car keys. Other than that, he’s kept his distance from the whole scene. He’s never been the most extroverted kid in town.

                The other kids at school are nice enough, he guesses. He knows he’s a little weird; hell, he’s a lot weirder than any of them could ever know, but they’re…pleasant. They make small talk with him in class, and they must think he’s at least a little sane, if the number of people he’s caught peeking at his test answers is anything to go by, but he doesn’t really have any _friends_.

                Well, okay. He has one. Charlie’s his one and only true friend, but he’s pretty sure she’d be his best friend no matter what. She’s friends with just about anyone she deems interesting or fun enough to bask in her bubbly personality, but what matters the most to Cas is that she keeps his secret. When she essentially broke into his house to surprise him on the night of his eighteenth birthday and caught him with a bowl of newt tails and crushed-up crystals, she looked him in the eye and said _Neat._ So there’s that going for him, but she prefers Netflix and dates with her girlfriend Dorothy over parties, anyway.

                Cas isn’t sure why this one is different. Something deep in his gut pulled him to this damn graduation party, so here he is. He’s pretty sure the guy throwing it invited him, but he had so many half-assed invites tossed at him in various classes that he can’t say for certain. Most of them were probably because they felt bad about him overhearing them inviting other people.

                He also doubts that anyone really cares whether or not he was invited. It’s so easy to get in, and so dim inside anyway, that he’s actually a little disappointed. He spent a good thirty minutes switching out clothes and trying in vain to fix up his hair; he deserves a little appreciation, damn it, but no, all he has to do is throw five dollars at the football player asking for beer money contributions and slip inside.

                Once he’s in, he’s even less sure why the hell he came here. The music is too loud, and all of the different energies in the room are seriously fucking with all the meditation he did earlier to mellow out. He considers turning around and leaving, but there’s still that nagging feeling in his gut. Last time that happened, he went home instead of to his favorite coffee place after school and basically saved Gabe from choking to death. Call it a hunch. Maybe a hunch influenced by the magic in his bones, but a hunch nonetheless, so he stays.

                It doesn’t take him long to decide that this party would be much easier if he was less than completely sober. With all of the noise and at least sixty people in the house already, his mind is seriously overloaded. He quickly locates the kitchen and wanders into it, slinking by the couple that’s already making out on one of the countertops to get to the drinks.

                The party can’t have officially started more than twenty minutes ago, but there’s already a group of other graduating seniors around the kitchen table taking lines of shots. He rolls his eyes, because he knows damn well why they’re doing it. It’s always some weird display of masculinity, and though he finds that irritating, he wanders over to them regardless.

                He doesn’t even look up to see who’s surrounding him when he makes his way right up to the table, picks up a shot, and downs it without so much as blinking. The stuff is _strong_ ; the cheap, get-you-drunk-quick type of strong, but Cas has never been as affected by the stuff as he should be. He’s not sure if his magic works to heal him and dilutes the effect or what, but it’s annoying sometimes. This one time, though, it could come in handy.

                He pauses for just a moment after the first shot, looking the jock across the table from him dead in the eye as he flips the glass upside-down and puts it back on the table with a self-satisfied smile. Cas knows him, or, he knows _about_ him. Dean Winchester. Classic heart-throb and playboy extraordinaire. He’s pretty sure he’s heard something about Dean winning one of these things before, or maybe the boy himself bragging about it, and for some reason, Cas wants to knock him off his throne.

                He picks up the next glass and finishes it off just as quickly as the first, and he doesn’t stop there. He has time to count the freckles on Dean Winchester’s nose before he’s finished, eleven empty shot glasses resting in front of where he stands unfazed. He doesn't think anyone was really timing, but he's pretty sure he fell under the minute mark, which he's heard is what these guys go by for such things. He could probably do twelve or more before he actually got tipsy, but then people might start getting suitably suspicious. Not that crying out ‘witch’ was popular nowadays, but they could accuse him of somehow filling some of the glasses with water or something, and he so doesn’t want to bicker with anyone right now.

                “Is that all, gentlemen?” he asks, his voice as low and rumbling as ever, but each word clear. It would take more than a handful of drinks to take that away from him. He levels his gaze with Dean’s, and brushes off the flutter in his stomach as some small effect of the copious amounts of vodka he’d just taken in. “I was hoping for a little more of a competition.”

                Across the table, he can feel Dean sizing him up. Cas spent so much time staring in the mirror before he left home that night that he knows exactly what Dean sees. He sees a crisp black button-up, more expensive than some of the other boys’ outfits combined, though by no choice of Cas’s. He sees slim jeans and black dress shoes, all just slightly too fancy for a high school graduation party with a five dollar beer cover, but plain enough not to draw any attention. Cas’s hair is still messy, something he swears there must be a spell for somewhere, and there’s (blessedly even) stubble dotting the line of his jaw. Nothing interesting, if it weren’t for the details.

                Cas got his first tattoo when he was sixteen, done by a family friend who trusted him not to get them busted for breaking age restrictions. It was a sigil for protection, as were the next two he got, but the habit became a bit addicting. It quickly stopped being a way to keep himself safe when opening up connections to the other side, and crossed over into the _because I goddamn want to_ territory. He has a pair of dark angel wings on one wrist, a bee on the other, and the phases of the moon lining one of his forearms. With his sleeves rolled up, the first two are showing, and the third is peeking out from under the black fabric.

                Falling just below his collarbone is a raw crystal on a leather cord. He always has one on him, and sometimes an extra couple in his bag or in his pocket. He charges them in the morning, so he has a little help throughout the day. He’d brought one for courage tonight, which seems almost comical to him now that he’s inside and staring the school’s number-one heartbreaker in the eye without so much as blinking, but taking the first step inside hadn’t been easy.

                But none of that matters to Dean, he thinks. He doubts Dean Winchester has ever noticed his collarbones, his messy hair, or his carefully controlled stubble. Dean probably just sees a kid who’s always hovering just on the edge of social acceptability, and maybe he’s a little bit pissed that he just got knocked off his shot throne by a nobody.

                “I’ll leave you to it,” he says, bowing out and away from the table before anyone seems to find more than a grunt of approval or a wide-eyed stare to offer him.

 

 

Dean can hardly believe this guy.

                He’s seen him around, sure. He’s kinda hard to miss these days, but Dean is almost entirely sure he’s never seen him _outside_ of school, and now here he is, waltzing up and taking _eleven fucking shots_ like it’s nothing.

                He’s offended.

                And a little bit aroused.

                He’s still trying to think of something to say when the boy is already turning and walking off, and though Dean’s only had one beer, he feels like his brain is wading through molasses as he watches Castiel walk away.

                The only thought he has is to _go_ , and he does, hurrying away from the table and trailing after Castiel. He catches up with him just before the guy has a chance to step back into the crowded living room, one hand shooting out to hold Cas’s arm so he’ll stop.

                He does, but it’s not hard to spot the confusion in those big blue eyes when Cas turns around to face him. He can’t blame the guy. Hell, Dean himself doesn’t have a damn clue why he’s doing this. It’s just a funny feeling, something nagging at him and telling him not to let Cas walk away.

                “Where’re you going?” he finally asks, dropping his hand quickly so he seems less like a concerned parent. He’s just trying to make small talk, but the rushed way the words spill out of his mouth might’ve made it weird. “I mean, uh. Pretty dramatic exit…” Dean struggles for a moment, desperately trying not to fuck up the poor kid’s name. “Cas?”

                The knowing way Castiel looks at him tells him he knows damn well where the nickname came from, but at the same time, Dean doesn’t think he minds. He’d probably prefer ‘Cas’ over some guy fucking up the pronunciation of his real name.

                “I guess so,” Cas says, raising one dark eyebrow at Dean, “though it was more so I wouldn’t have to hover and watch everyone else drink until they pass out, trying to beat me.”

He shrugs, and Dean swears the motherfucker knows exactly what he’s doing with that easy smirk on his face.

                In truth, Cas has no idea why Dean Winchester is here, blocking his exit from the kitchen, but he isn’t going to let the boy’s presence intimidate him. All Cas knows is that he’s good at baseball and he has thirteen freckles on his nose, at least in this lighting. Not a lot to go off of.

                “Well, you ain’t wrong there. You kinda killed their egos,” Dean admits, one hand restlessly lifting to rub at the back of his neck. He’s never nervous when he talks to girls, but guys…that’s different. There’s the weight of the secrecy pushing down on his shoulders, and a sprinkling of ingrained shame rising up in his chest, but there’s also the desire. Cas is cute, and different, and Dean’s had a longass week of finals and he is _not_ leaving this party without getting _some_ action.

                “Maybe their egos needed to be taken down a notch.”

                Dean nods, but he can’t find anything else to say. The way Cas is staring at him, it’s piercing, like he can see right through him but still can’t quite figure him out. It makes him feel transparent, but he finds solace in the fact that he isn’t so easy to unravel.

                When another few seconds pass in silence, the two of them just staring at each other in the midst of the building chaos of the party, Cas clears his throat and takes a step back. “Better go mingle,” he murmurs, excusing himself without saying it in so many words. He turns and walks away again, leaving Dean feeling like an idiot.

                _Nice going, Winchester,_ he thinks to himself, _really nailed that one._

Disappointed, Dean trudges back into the kitchen and decides to try his hand at a couple of those shots.

 

 

                It’s probably an hour or so before Cas sees Dean again. He’ll never admit it out loud, but he’s been keeping an eye out for the other, wondering exactly why he was stopped back in the kitchen. Dean looked like he had something to say that he just couldn’t get out, but as curious as Cas was about it, he wasn’t going to stand there and stare at the jock’s green eyes all night, even though they were framed with those long lashes.

                And that’s the other thing. Cas has no idea why his mind is so eager to memorize all of Dean. He just learned last week that Charlie has a little mole on the top of both wrists and he’s known her for going on three years now, but he already knows that Dean Winchester has flecks of gold in his eyes and a single freckle on his lower lip.

                He’s still trying to push all thoughts of the boy aside, telling himself he may never see him again after graduation anyway, when Dean comes sauntering up to him. Cas can smell the alcohol coming off of him from five feet away, but damn if the tousled, flushed look of a tipsy man doesn’t make Dean look even better.

                “Lost?” Cas asks, raising his brows at Dean as he approaches.

                “No.”

                That’s all Dean says before Cas’s hand is grabbed and he’s tugged impatiently off of the sofa arm he’d precariously settled himself onto just a few minutes prior. The bottle of water he’d been nursing in one hand drops to the floor, but Dean either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, and just keeps leading Cas through the crowded room.

                “Where are you taking me?” Cas blurts out, when it becomes clear that Dean’s not going to explain on his own.

                “Shh,” comes Dean’s reply, a crooked smile spreading over his lips when he glances back to Cas. “It’s a secret.”

                Cas opens his mouth to protest, but he wonders if it really _is_ a secret. A secret Dean may not want to get out anytime soon, if the lustful, needy energy suddenly emanating from the jock is anything to go by.

                Somehow, Cas knows going through with this will be nothing but trouble, but he says nothing as Dean pulls him up the stairs and finds the nearest open room. Thankfully, it’s a spare bedroom, because Cas isn’t sure Dean even bothered checking and Cas is so not having sex on a bathroom floor.

                The door closes behind them with a strange air of finality, though maybe that’s in Cas’s head. Something about this just feels more complicated than a couple of teenagers hooking up at a party, though technically, Cas now knows that’s exactly what it is.

                Before Cas has a chance to be classically blunt and ask if that’s what’s really what’s going on, Dean’s mouth is crashing down on him and he’s being turned so Dean is against the wall, Cas instinctively resting one hand on his chest.

                “Dean, are you sure...?” Cas starts, not so sure if Dean’s in any state to be asking for this. Though, to be fair, he probably thinks Cas is drunk too, after his little stunt when he’d first arrived.

                “Yeah, ‘m sure. Look, sober Dean even left a neat little note.”

                Cas, his free hand now resting on Dean’s hip, tilts his head curiously at the other. “A note?” he questions, his tone suggesting just how much he doubts that.

                Dean nods eagerly. “Mmhm,”

                Before Cas can question it further, Dean’s already pulling a scrap of paper from his pocket, and Cas be damned, there it is. It’s just one word, but the handwriting is steady and somehow inherently Dean.

_Yes._

                That’s all Cas needs, and while he files away the fact that Dean had to drink his way into approaching Cas again for a later discussion, all he cares about in that moment is the second lower-lip freckle he’d just discovered, one he’d missed in the kitchen earlier.

                Cas would swear to God right then and there that he felt actual _sparks_ in his stomach when he kissed Dean properly. The pull in his gut is stronger than ever, and though he still has no idea why he’s been brought here, it feels good. Warm. Like this was meant to happen.

 

 

                But when Cas wakes up the next morning, naked in a stranger’s bed, he’s alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me or help support me and my work at my new blog inkstainedfic.tumblr.com!  
> kudos & (gentle/constructive) reviews always appreciated ♥  
> more chapters to come, I have about 14 planned out but it can all be adjusted based on demand!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starting college is a milestone Cas has been waiting for since Freshman year. He's determined to be his most authentic self, meet new people, and move on from an unlucky summer. Unfortunately, nothing's perfect, and not everybody grows up.

                Castiel has learned two things since graduation.

                Lesson number one: Not being in high school isn’t as good as everyone insisted it would be, just as being _in_ high school was ten times worse than the “golden years” mentality that had been drilled into him.

                Lesson number two: Men are either the absolute worst, or Cas is shockingly undesirable. He prefers to think it’s the former, though both theories have their days.

                Dean Winchester was only the first in many apparent mistakes Castiel has made with his newfound freedom, though strangely the most devastating. When Cas first woke up after that strange night, he found nothing out of the ordinary; it’s not as if he was used to waking up beside anyone, after all, but then his mind began to notice everything that was out of place.

                He was naked, and Cas Novak never slept naked. He had a very specific set of boxers and t-shirts that had been deemed comfortable enough to be worthy of sleeping in, and he never went without. Even more concerning, however, was the revelation that followed when his vision cleared. He wasn’t in his room. He had no idea whose room this was, but he didn’t care enough to stop and figure it out once he recalled exactly _why_ he was in that room.

                _Okay_ , he’d thought, _this isn’t so bad. Happens all the time, right? Hooking up is half the reason these parties happen_.

                Except…

                It took two to do what Castiel now clearly remembered doing. In this case, it took both Castiel and Dean Winchester, but the other was nowhere in sight. Cas peeked over the side of the bed, but didn’t see Dean’s clothes, either. In vain hope, he wondered if perhaps Dean had just gone to the bathroom, but he wasn’t sure why he’d get fully clothed to go piss. Something was wrong.

                And that was when he saw it. A little note, folded up on the bedside table. Cas’s heart raced with nerves, wondering why it was there. Could it be an explanation? Dean’s phone number, even?

                Hesitantly, Cas reached out for it, noticing the faded and crumpled ‘ _yes_ ’ on the outside of the folded note. One word that had ultimately sparked all of this. His sleepy brain struggled together with his fingers to work the tiny note open, but he managed. When he succeeded, he was met with only one more word.

                _Sorry._

It wasn’t consoling. It wasn’t a comfort, or in his mind, any proper explanation, either. Confusion, anger, and a surprisingly sharp sting of abandonment welled up in him before he had any time to hold them back, culminating in an impulse decision to tear the note in half and let it drop to the floor, as if Dean would ever know what he’d done with it.

                Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the feeling in his gut before the party was just the apprehension of change, and nerves once he crossed the threshold. Maybe those shots got to him, after all. It was pretty strong stuff in there. Maybe none of it was meant to happen, and he should stop blaming his magic for every sudden feeling his hormonal teenage body experienced.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

                The only blessing that morning had been that Castiel woke up before the rest of the hungover teens in the house, and he was able to make a quick and stealthy escape. Nobody had to know he’d been ditched. Hell, he never even had to see these people again, less the ones who were heading to the same college as him.

                Just as the sun was peeking over the horizon, Castiel drove off down the street, hoping to leave brief memories of Dean Winchester behind him.

 

 

                Of course, things were rarely so simple.

                Every bad coffee date, every brief flash of a summer romance gone wrong has Castiel’s mind wandering back to the party. He knows he shouldn’t care so much, that it was nothing more than a chance meeting and a one-night stand, but something in him says otherwise. While his mind knows better and his heart is just as confused as the rest of him, he still feels what he swears to be a thrill of magic when he thinks too hard about it. He’s trying to convince himself it’s just because he latched on so much, so quickly, but in the back of his mind, he’s not so sure.

                Summer, as it often does, passes by too quickly for Castiel’s liking. Before he knows it, the early stages of Autumn have swept up the local college and classes are starting, much to his chagrin. Taking the last couple of weeks of the summer off from pushing himself to be social had been incredibly refreshing, but now his thoughts are clogged with all the noise and different auras around him again. It wouldn’t be so bad with an older crowd, but the energies of other people his age waver so much that it’s hard to keep up with.

                He’s always been sensitive to that kind of thing. It’s not quite like mind-reading, because he has no idea _why_ these people are giving off the vibes they are, or even if it’s good or bad, sometimes. It’s difficult to differentiate between someone anxiously awaiting a first date to meet them for coffee and someone deeply dreading an exam next hour. People he knows well are easier to read, he thinks, but then again, Charlie’s moods are often straightforward, and his family doesn’t count because they share the same vein of magic.

                Castiel makes a fair amount of acquaintances in the first few weeks of classes, at least. He lives off-campus in his own apartment so he can have some time away from the busy campus life, but during classes he’s met a couple people who are both interesting and interested in him. Then again, he’s outwardly changed himself a little since high school, and he can see why he’s grabbing some people’s attention.

                His car, which was the most low-profile vehicle he could get his father to approve for him, now sits idle most days, traded in for a bike. A motorcycle, to be precise. He finds it freeing. He’s added another tattoo, and started to expand his wardrobe. It’s nothing extreme, but he’s finally crossed over from looking like he’s headed to a witchy business meeting to looking more age-appropriate, but he’ll never give up his crystals. They work, but the fact that they’ve become _trendy_ nowadays is both a blessing and a curse. It’s good in that his don’t stick out so much, though they’re a little more raw than the mainstream ones and it seems they’re a little more popular for the female students, but bad because he’s afraid he looks like some kind of poser now. Castiel and his cheap crystals, maybe. Though he can tell them one thing, the real deal doesn’t always come cheap.

                There’s a chill outside the day Castiel decides to make use of the common ground on campus for his early-morning meditations. Besides the benefits meditation holds for full-blooded humans, it helps Castiel charge up a little and clear his mind before campus gets too crowded. He’s been trying to do it at home, but the neighbors wake up early and their dogs are barkers. Yippers, more like.

                He arrives at campus at sunrise and dismounts his motorcycle, pausing to breathe in the clean air. There’s a breeze starting up and he can see little dewdrops still clinging to the grass, and the air is crisp. Perfect. He smiles slightly to himself and walks over to an open field of grass not far from the fountain in the center of campus.

                He doesn’t hesitate to drop his bag into the grass beside his feet and kneel, retrieving his yoga mat from it and spreading it out before him. He usually wears shorts (or, when he’s at home, occasionally nothing) for this, but because of the breeze he’s decided to show up in his favorite leggings. He’s already ‘eccentric’ enough, he doesn’t think one more little thing will change anybody’s opinions of him. He’s already had at least two students in the past week praise him for being so ‘progressive’ and ‘breaking gender roles’ just because of a pink crystal he had around his neck for a couple of days.

                He lays out a spread of his favorites before him on the mat, carefully arranging the crystals by ones with similar properties. The agate that best helps him keep calm goes beside the citrine that clears his mind, and it progresses from there until his top ten or so are all neatly aligned. He glances over his shoulder to make sure nobody is around just yet before hovering his hands over them with closed eyes and a happy sigh, letting the faint auras radiate out toward him.

                He relaxes and slowly shifts into a cross-legged position, hands resting on his knees. Somewhere, he can hear a bird chirping faintly, which is much better than the muffled yipping he sometimes hears through the walls of his apartment. Everything is calm, and once he even feels something land on his hand. He doesn’t dare move for fear of frightening it, but when he peeks his eyes open, he sees a bright blue butterfly and smiles softly at it.

                The roar of a loud engine somewhere interrupts his silence, and the startled butterfly disappears as quickly as it had come. Annoyed, Cas turns to see what the disturbance was, only to have his heart drop into his stomach.

                He knows that car. He knows _damn well_ who owns that car, and he has to go. He’s not getting pulled in again by whatever Dean Winchester does to him, and he’s definitely not going to…

                As Cas gathers up his crystals and moves to stand, a rough hand pushes him unexpectedly, sending him sprawling into the cool grass. He looks up to see someone he went to school with, but it’s not Dean. It’s Alastair, and boy, is he a dick. Cas would rather have a thorough, face-to-face conversation with Dean about every detail of their hookup than even see this guy’s face, but it’s too late to make that bargain with the universe, because the boy’s already speaking.

                “Where d’you think you’re going, fag?” Alastair snivels in that whining, grating voice, and Cas knows he should probably be at least a little afraid. He shouldn’t use his magic in public, and he’d rather not start a fist fight on campus either, so Alastair has an unfortunate upper hand. Still, he really can’t take him seriously.

                “Fag?” he repeats, choking back an involuntarily laugh as he pushes himself back up out of the grass. “Is that still the best you can do? I’d think you could do better by now.”

                He would have continued, if he wasn’t immediately shoved back down onto the ground. Before he can say anything else, Alastair is sitting on his waist, and though there’s a thousand comments he could make about the rapidly wavering heterosexuality of the moment, he keeps his trap shut and tries to figure out the best path to take.

                He could just wait it out, he thinks reluctantly. Unfortunately, Alastair seems determined to piss him off as much as possible, and he scoops up Cas’s _favorite_ crystal and throws it across the yard. He’ll be able to find it, sure, but it’ll take a while and it’s just fucking rude.

                He feels his hands heat up against his will, and he knows soon enough they’ll be glowing with rage-fueled power if he doesn’t calm himself down. He’s trapped, leaving him only one option in the fight-or-flight part of his brain.

                He’s all but forgotten about the gleaming Impala that pulled up before Alastair popped out of nowhere until a second figure joins the fray, only this one is grabbing Alastair by the shoulders and hoisting him up like the lanky vermin he is. He can’t quite make out who it is at first because the sun has reached a high enough point to start filtering through the tree he’d been using for shade, blocking his vision. He squints blue eyes and holds a hand in front of his face to get a better look as a sudden swarm of butterflies have a frenzy in his stomach.

                “He’s right,” Cas hears the figure grumble, and there’s no denying Dean’s voice. “You should think of some better insults.”

                Alastair looks pissed as all Hell about being interrupted. He grips Dean’s wrists and struggles to push his hands off of him, though Dean’s stronger. He just has more muscle. Cas would be able to tell that even if he hadn’t seen the man naked before. “What’s it matter to you?” he grumbles, trying instead to duck out of Dean’s grip. His arm is grabbed again before he can get more than a couple feet away. “Defending your boyfriend or somethin’?”

                Cas sees something flash behind Dean’s eyes. More than that, he feels a change in the complex energy the young man gives off. He’s even harder to decode than most, but the change is clear, and suddenly things make more sense.

                Dean didn’t leave because of anything Cas did wrong, or because he wasn’t good enough. Perhaps even worse, Dean left because he was ashamed. Ashamed of what they did; hell, probably ashamed of who he was. Ashamed of ever having touched Cas.

                Great.

                Alastair is pushed aside without another word. Now that he’s lost the upper hand, the sneering boy is already up and running, which is both comical and disappointing. _Tough guy, huh?_ Cas thinks to himself, unable to help but roll his eyes.

                He has another problem to deal with now, though.

                He sees the hand Dean’s offering, but he doesn’t take it. He gets himself up and brushes the grass off of his black leggings, allowing himself a brief glare at the other boy, even though half of him wants to Dean to come a little closer.

                “I didn’t need your help,” Cas mumbles. He’s already bending down to gather up his things, properly this time, and start packing them back away in his bag. “I can handle myself.”

                Dean, who had been smiling proudly just a moment before, looks pretty offended now. Cas isn’t sure if he cares or not.

                “Yeah, sure looked like you were handling it. You’re welcome, by the way.”

                Cas looks up with narrowed eyes, shoving his mat into the bag with a little more force than is strictly necessary. “You want me to thank you?” he scoffs. “You fuck me, leave me to wake up alone, and disappear for the whole summer, and now you want me to _thank you_?”

                Dean’s taken a step back, but he gives a little bit of a shrug. “I helped. Saying thanks is just what people do, Cas,” he replies, apparently choosing to ignore the more sensitive topic.

                Slinging his bag over his shoulder, Cas matches Dean’s step back with a long stride forward, leaning in close enough to whisper close to Dean’s ear.

                “If I remember clearly, I wasn’t the only one getting fucked, either,” he snaps, bitter now that he’s certain he’s figured out the reason for all of the confusion he’s had to work through since their night together. It wasn’t just five minutes of messy, tipsy sex. It was more than that, and foolish Cas had let himself believe that would mean something.

                He knows it’s a low blow, now knowing that Dean wants to distance himself from anything that suggests he’s anything less than straight, but at the moment, he doesn’t care. He turns and stalks off, leaving Dean speechless.

                He’s going to have to find a new place to meditate if he wants to get through this day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, feel free to come talk to me at inkstainedcas.tumblr.com!  
> kudos/comments (be nice or constructive please lmao) always welcome & appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hold onto your pants, everyone, things are going to get a little intense. No worries, you'll get plenty of fluff in due time :) bookmark/subscribe for future updates!

                “I’m telling you, man, I don’t know what I did wrong.”

                Across the table, Sam pauses with his fork still resting where he’d stabbed it into his stack of pancakes. “With Castiel?” he asks, shoving a piece of the top pancake in his mouth before he’s even finished speaking.

                “No, with you. Eating pancakes at friggin’ nine o’clock. _At night_. _At a burger joint,_ ” Dean laments, and Sam honestly can’t tell if his disappointment is a joke or not.

                “Technically, it’s just a diner. There’s no law that says you have to get burgers at a diner with a twenty-four hour menu.”

                Dean shakes his head, watching with disgust as Sam piles more syrup onto the fluffy stack. “Gross.”

                His reply only earns him a roll of his little brother’s eyes, which was pretty much what he expected. He keeps his trap shut for a second, a fry in hand, which he uses to poke uselessly at a little grain of salt on the side of his plate.

                “With that, too,” he mumbles reluctantly. “With Castiel. I mean, I helped, right?”

                Sam shrugs, too busy reaching for his milkshake to reply right away. When he does, he cocks an eyebrow at Dean like that extra moment should’ve given him time to realize he’s being a dumbass. “Somehow, I think it was less about you trying to save him or whatever, and more about you totally ignoring what happened before.”

                Dean ducks his head a little further, pretending to be entirely occupied by his single fry. “That’s not fair, though,” he huffs half-heartedly, “I wasn’t trying to be a dick. I just freaked.”

                “Yeah, like you told me the first hundred times after it happened. And you still can’t come up with an excuse as to why you couldn’t have gotten his number from someone and said sorry. Or found him on Facebook, for Christ’s sake,” his little brother points out matter-of-factly.

                “I don’t use Facebook.” Dean finally shoves the fry in his mouth, though it’s not half as satisfying as it usually is. His stomach isn’t happy with him today. Possibly from all the stress he’s been causing himself since the incident that morning.

                “That’s all you have to say? And yes, you do. There’s tons of stupid pictures of you on there.”

                “That’s just ‘cause Jo tags me in shit. Not my fault she likes to take a thousand selfies.”

                Sam just rolls his eyes and re-focuses on his pancake. Dean knows he’s being stubborn, but it’s hard for him to admit that he fucked up that night over the summer. He’s tried to explain to his brother, without being too gross about it, exactly how it felt. It wasn’t normal. The feeling Castiel stirred up in his gut, Hell, it almost felt like the one time he’d run into a _nice_ witch, and she’d healed him up after an especially shitty hunt. Like magic.

                Sam insists that that’s just what love or whatever is supposed to feel like, but Dean’s certain it wasn’t normal. It was good weird, though, for once in his life. He hasn’t been on a hunt since a week after the party, and his life could use a little weird again, hence his interest in Castiel sparking up all over again the second he’d spotted him earlier that day.

                He’s not sure how to explain what had happened before to Cas, either. ‘ _Sorry, it’s just that I have a sensitive sense of masculinity, possibly caused by a toxic upbringing, and I’d rather decapitate a vampire than say you made me feel good when we…’_

Dean shakes the thoughts off, sighing. Whatever it is about Castiel, it’s going to be the death of him.

“It ain’t normal,” he murmurs, before he can really stop himself. “Whatever happened that night…I dunno, man. Maybe somebody put something in my drink.”

Sam shakes his head once more. He’s really not sure how else to drill it into Dean’s head that sometimes people just _feel_ things, and it doesn’t have to be supernatural or because he was under the influence. “The drink you had because you couldn’t go up to Castiel and ask him out while sober? Yeah, no, dude. I’m thinking it’s more like, you had a really big crush on him for months before you even saw him at the party—don’t deny it, I saw you stalking his pages forever ago—and you got butterflies or whatever when you finally got him alone and, y’know.” He pulls a face, apparently unwilling to go into any of the finer details of what he’s gathered about that night.

“I know the difference, Sammy. It's, like, magic or something. Serious, real magic,” Dean insists aloud, trying once again to defend himself and his reactions. In all honesty, he’d only taken Castiel into the bedroom to make out or something. Something nice and non-committal, that he couldn’t really be held to later. That hadn’t turned out as planned. “And we keep meeting. I swear to God or whoever the hell’s in charge up there, I saw him like three more times today. And back in school, he’d pop up in empty hallways when I was…y’know, taking a break from class, and I still swear that was him we saw at the movies last month, and—“

“Dude.” Sam looks exasperated, even more so than he usually is with his big brother. “You live in the same town. Hell, you still go to the same school. You’re gonna see each other. Kinda how these things work.”

“But this is different, Sammy. It ain’t natural.”

Sam doesn’t even justify Dean’s arguments with an answer, that time. Instead, he drops his fork onto the plate and cleans himself up with a napkin. Dean knows the ‘let’s go’ look when he sees it, and he reluctantly drops a few bills onto the table as he gets up, Sam following suit.

They’re parked down the street, because Sam had been begging Dean to take him to the bookstore for weeks, so Dean had taken him there first, wandering around until closing when they were ushered out and found themselves strolling into the diner, instead. Sam’s already stopped by the curb, waiting for a car to pass by so he can cross, when Dean hears it.

At first, he’s not sure what the hell _it_ is. Maybe some alley cat getting in a fight, because he’s sure he heard a meow in there somewhere, but at the same time, there’s some banging going on down there.

While an alley cat’s territory war or something isn’t exactly the kind of issue Dean handles, something has the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He hesitates, but in the end he walks over to Sam and silently rests a hand on his arm, shushing him before he can make any protests.

“Stay here,” he grunts, glancing around at the otherwise empty street before pulling out the gun concealed in his waistband.

“What’s going on, Dean?” Sam blurts out, despite the warning to be quiet. He knows that look, and it doesn’t take the appearance of the gun to convince Sam something’s up. “I can come with you…”

Dean gives a quick and final shake of his head. “No. Let me handle this. Besides, it could be nothing,” he points out, though something in his gut says otherwise.

Sam’s reluctant, but he isn’t carrying anything but a pocket knife, so he does as he’s told and waits under the streetlight adjacent to the alley while Dean inches out of the pool of light, gun locked and loaded.

He’s just barely reached the mouth of the alley when there’s a shuffling noise. Dean instinctively raises his gun, ready to fire at any second at whatever supernatural sonofabitch is causing trouble back there.

A figure emerges, but it’s not a filthy vampire scavenging for drunkards to drink dry, or a stray werewolf.

It’s Castiel Novak, covered in blood and nursing a kitten in his arms.

 

* * *

 

 

Cas isn’t sure exactly why, but the whole scene that morning had left him feeling…lonely.

In all fairness, he’s a nearly nineteen-year-old witch with no familiar, no coven outside of his increasingly distant biological family, not even a romantic partner. By witch terms, his life is pretty damn sad.

So, naturally, the only remedy was to skip class and impulsively drive down to the animal shelter. His only real defense was that he spent a good two hours there, scooping up and trying to bond with every cat they had to ensure he made a good decision. He’d hate for his own loneliness to be the cause of the same fate for a cat who didn’t like him.

There’s one in particular, though, that seems dead set on going home with him. It’s tiny, and Cas can hardly ignore the irony of its jet-black fur, complete with a piercing set of yellow-green eyes. She’s perfect, really, and Cas is convinced that she’s sensitive to magic. He knows cats are supposed to be able to read emotions fairly well, but this one won’t leave him alone, and she watches him knowingly as if to say she’s aware of the kind of day he’s had; first Alastair, then Dean, then a shitty first class of the day that went over and made him miss his window for lunch, and finally the high-tension ride to the shelter.

Her eyes are so intelligent that he even pressed his silver ring against her belly for a moment to test something, but there was no reaction. Not a familiar, then, but he’s heard that some animals are especially good at recognizing natural magic. He even caught himself thinking that maybe the black cat suspicion had some basis of truth by the time he left the shelter with her.

He feels like the paperwork takes _ages_ , and he has to thoroughly convince them that he’ll stop by the pet store right away (as soon as he has the chance to swap his bike out for something with a trunk), but finally he gets to leave with her. He tucks her carefully into his jacket and rides slow for the few miles back to his apartment.

And he does as he’s told—really. He brings her with him to the pet store and buys an excess of everything, using his father’s credit card without regret. Technically speaking, he’s only supposed to use it for “important” things, but what’s more important than Salem?

He can already imagine the endless teasing his brothers are going to give him about the name, too, but he’d loved it since he was a child. In fact, the first time he’d asked for a cat was during a re-run of _Sabrina the Teenage Witch_ , and he’s not ashamed to admit that he’s had a few binge sessions of it on Hulu since.

He gets restless at home, though. He’s been sitting on the couch with Salem for hours, and he’s pretty sure she’s tired of it, too. After the bustling shelter, his quiet little apartment is probably the equivalent of sitting in an especially dull library, even with all the toys he’d bought for her.

“How about we go for a walk?” he asks aloud, peeking down at her tiny body as she kneads relentlessly at his thighs. “Get some fresh air.”

He scoops her back up and stands to go retrieve a hoodie, which he promptly zips up two-thirds of the way and tucks her into. She shifts restlessly for a few moments, but seems to find a comfortable position and leans her head against his chest, eyes closing contently. He swears he even hears a little purr.

“Perfect,” he announces, smiling warmly down at his little bundle. He exits his apartment, resisting the urge to take the fire escape as he usually does, and heads off down the road just as it’s getting dark out.

 

Things are going well, too. She peeks her head out for most of the time, taking everything in with those wide eyes, but of course, Castiel’s day can only go well for so long.

He’s actually on his way home when it happens, having made the decision to cut through an alleyway. He’s not usually afraid of them, even at night. It’s a small town, and even if anyone did try to pull something on him, it wouldn’t be him ending up in the ER.

As long as the threat was human, of course.

He’s halfway down the alley when a shadow steps out and blocks his path. One of his hands goes instinctively to cover Salem’s head, while the other extends in front of him, palm faced out and held up like the weapon it was.

The figure says nothing, so Castiel takes a risk and lets a bluish light spread from his hand, illuminating the potential threat.

” _Azazel,_ ” he breathes, feeling his muscles coil at the very sight of him.

The demon smirks, cocking his head off to the side and fixing Castiel with a suddenly yellow-eyed glare. “Hello, Castiel,” he hums, and that’s all the warning Cas gets before he’s tossed aside by an invisible force, pinned to the dirty alley wall. He can feel the abrasive, chipping brick of the wall rubbing into his back and he swears the air around Azazel is ten degrees cooler than the rest of the city. Maybe even more, since he’s seeing his breath already.

“What do you want?” he growls, eyes narrowed at the demon.

“A little favor. You can do that for me, can’t you sweetheart?” Azazel prompts, a wicked grin now etched onto his features. “We have a special connection, after all.”

Cas all but hisses at the demon, rejecting the very idea of being _connected_ to him. Okay, so maybe Cas’s great-great-grandfather or whoever the hell he was made a mistake and sold himself off to a demon for the sake of strengthening his lineage. Maybe the magic in Castiel’s blood is a little bit stronger because of a stupid deal with this particular demon, and maybe Azazel pays a little visit to the Novaks every quarter century or so, but it’s not to bear gifts. He takes a sacrifice, one that no living Novak had ever agreed to.

“I have nothing in common with you,” he snaps, struggling against the force pinning him to the wall. “You have plenty of mindless demons following you around, go ask them to run your errands for you.”

Azazel gives a mock-pout, and with a twist of his hand Cas is crying out. It feels like an icy fist is closing around his heart, and he can’t say he’s in love with the sensation. “Words hurt, Castiel. Besides, you just happen to be in just the right place at the right time. You’ll be rewarded,” he hums sweetly, as if that’s all Castiel needs to hear to fall at his feet and agree to anything he wants.

“You killed my brother,” Castiel snarls viciously. “ _I saw you._ ”

The demon before him shrugs. “Jimmy was weak, sweetheart. Not my fault he couldn’t take the heat. Besides, I doubt your family really needed two of you. I thought I was actually being merciful, taking the spare. All I need you to do now is one little favor. There’s a boy I need to collect, but someone’s in my way.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything else. He can feel warm blood seeping through the claw-like rips that were now over his chest, and while Azazel was talking, he found the strength to lift his hand to the wounds and cover it in blood. Behind his back, he painted a sigil, glowing faintly with power.

“Go to Hell,” he sneers, pressing his bloody palm against the sigil just in time to catch a glimpse of Azazel’s shocked face as he’s banished. Good riddance, too, Castiel thinks.

He drops to the ground none too gracefully, but he manages to land on his side, so Salem isn’t hurt. He looks down anxiously to check on her, and though he regretfully notes that she has some blood that caught on her ear and part of her head, she’s okay.

Castiel, on the other hand…he’s going to need stitches. He hates going to the hospital because they ask too many questions, but all of his other resources are too far away to be a safe enough bet, especially without his car or his bike. He’ll just have to suck it up and think of a convincing story along the way.

With a pained grunt, he pushes himself up from the ground and starts to shuffle toward the end of the alley once more. Just as he approaches, a man steps in front of him, and he’s ready to curse the shit out of some lower-level demon before he realizes he recognizes him. And the figure must recognize him, too, now that he’s shining a phone flashlight on Cas’s face.

He winces, holding a bloody hand up to block himself from the blinding light.

“Hello, Dean,” he greets, his voice rough from the effort it had taken to send such a powerful demon back to Hell where it belonged. “How good are you with a needle?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi hello so I know this one took FOREVER & I'm super sorry about that but I've been struggling with money so I was working crazy hours for the past month or so. will update here whenever I can ♥ thank you for every comment & kudo thus far, they're the reason I came back to this as soon as I could!

There’s three red flags that Dean’s instincts hang onto like a vice.

Number one is, of course, the blood. Dean’s seen it just as often belonging to another victim as anything else. It’s coming from Cas’s chest, sure, but it’s also dripping from his hand and staining part of the kitten’s ears.

Number two, the animal. Dean’s conscious mind really wants to believe the best of Castiel, but he’s seen a lot of fucked up shit. More often than not, the bunny gets screwed in a bunch of freaky deals.

And the third, and to Dean possibly the most damning, is the _smell_.

Dean knows sulfur when he smells it.

Cas is injured, sure. Plenty possible that he got mixed up in something he never should have witnessed, but he doesn’t seem as shaken as a civilian who got assaulted by a demon and somehow survived should be. He seems a little more like a seasoned vet walking out of a minor battle, and that has him on edge.

He wants to, but he doesn’t put the gun down.

“Pretty damn good,” he answers anyway, unfazed by the idea of performing an amateur stitching job on someone else. The idea of touching Cas again, well…that part’s a little bit intimidating, all else aside. “Got a few needles in the car.”

Castiel’s just _standing there,_ and it’s kind of infuriating. Whatever’s going on, it ain’t natural, and Dean knows it. Sam knows it, too, though his brother looks a little hesitant to pass a complete judgment.

Dean wishes he had that luxury.

Cas waits, head tilted off to one side, as if he knows something else is coming. He’s not sure what, but something about Dean…Cas can feel something like anger coming from him, but he’s not sure what it is, exactly. Defensiveness, maybe? He supposes it is a strange situation, but still, something’s off.

Maybe it’s the complete lack of surprise. First of all, Dean has a gun, and neither he or his brother seem afraid of it getting used. There’s some concern in there, but somehow, Cas feels like he’s under investigation. Standing face-to-face with Dean Winchester would’ve been stressful enough at the moment without that pit in his stomach, but it was too late to back away now.

“Dean,” he murmurs, speaking slowly. He holds Salem closer to his chest, though somehow he knows Dean wouldn’t hurt her. He grunts a little at the pain the friction against his chest causes, but he moves past it quickly. “Why are you…?”

He doesn’t get to finish, because Dean’s already walking up to him, one hand gripping the gun and the other taking hold of Cas’s arm. The grip isn’t bruising, but the message is clear: don’t run. “I want you to get in the car,” Dean says, with a sort of cool professionalism that’s even more nerve-wracking than pure rage would have been.

“Why?” Cas asks, blue eyes narrowed at the other. He’s had enough shit tonight, he doesn’t need…whatever this is. He flickers his gaze temporarily to the boy he knows to be Dean’s younger brother, but Sam just shrugs, his expression suggesting that he’s helpless to turn the situation around. Dean’s apparently good at taking charge.

“’Cause it looks to me like you might have a story to tell us. And either way, I ain’t stitching you up in the street.” Dean tugs lightly, but Cas pulls his arm away. He refuses to be pulled around like a criminal by someone his own age, and…

It hits him, hard and fast. Dean’s not surprised, but he’s wary, and he apparently carries a gun on a regular basis -- and, well, when Cas steps out of the musty alley, he notices the smell that Azazel left behind. It’s repulsive, but not enough to make the average man angry. Someone with experience, however…

“Hunter,” he whispers, first to himself, but he looks up to Dean with confused eyes. “You’re a hunter, aren’t you?”

The fact that Cas even knows what that is, outside of the everyday context, does nothing to soothe Dean’s suspicions. “The car,” he says, trying to seem more detached than he is. His brain is screaming at him to take this guy back to their place and give him a holy water bath, but there’s an ache in his chest at the sight of the boy’s injury. He chalks it up to his naturally protective instincts, at the idea to protect all innocents deeply ingrained in him, but there’s something different.

He’ll figure that out later.

Cas knows he should turn and run far away from the situation. Hell, if he can focus enough, he might be able to get himself across town before Dean knows what hit him, but he knows that won’t solve the problem. Dean would find him, and it would only make things seem even more suspicious. It doesn’t help that he’s exhausted from the recent encounter. He doesn’t even dare try to heal his bleeding wounds, and teleporting takes even more energy than that.

“Put the gun away,” he negotiates, his tone soft, yet firm. “I’m not going anywhere with that pointed in my face.”

Dean seems taken aback. It’s probably not every day that somebody defies him while staring down the barrel of a handgun. He doesn’t say anything, as if he expects Cas to take it all back and start for the car right away, but Cas doesn’t move.

Sam snorts a little, alleviating some of the tension almost immediately. Dean shoots him a glare over his shoulder, but the younger Winchester shrugs with false innocence and flashes a grin. “What? I like him.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he’s already shoving the gun back in his waistband. “Car,” he grumbles one last time, turning and heading for it. He walks slowly, pausing to make sure Cas is following. A man of his word, he is, however reluctantly. At least it’s a gorgeous car.

Cas gets in the backseat, and surprisingly, so does Sam. He’s not sure if it’s some unspoken agreement to keep an eye on Cas or a friendly gesture, but it helps him feel a little better about the situation, whether or not it should.

A few moments pass in silence, Cas sitting uncertainly on the edge of the seat at first, but Salem doesn’t seem to like that. Even if she’s not as intelligent as Cas is convinced she is, any animal would be able to pick up on the tension in the car, not to mention the simple notion that what had happened just a few minutes prior was _not good._ So Cas tries to relax, or at least fake doing so. He leans back in the seat and curls up slightly, still keeping her close to his chest. She’s restless, and he’s certain she’d rather be exploring the car and sniffing at everything and everyone she could get to, but he’s not about to let her out of his arms.

“Would appreciate if you could keep your feet off the leather,” Dean grumbles from up front, though he barely finishes the sentence. Cas interrupts him with a surprisingly sharp glare. The stress of the night is starting to get to him, and he’s so not arguing over something that stupid right now.

“And I would appreciate if you could, for once, try to not be an assbutt,” Cas snaps. He hears Sam snort as his phrasing and feels his cheeks color, because Gabriel has drilled it into his mind that that’s just not something people say (though, to him, it still makes perfect sense). It just slipped out.

“Sorry. Sorry, man,” Sam is saying, trying to cover his own slip, but Cas brushes it off. It’s not the younger Winchester he’s angry with. Dean, however, might have been cursed by now if Cas didn’t have a ridiculous soft spot for that pretty face.

Dean glances in the rearview mirror incredulously, as if he didn’t know Cas had that kind of tone in him, and Cas stares right back. He’ll cooperate, but he’s tense and maybe even a little bit scared, damn it, so playing nice is temporarily off the table.

“ ‘Scuse me?” Dean asks, filling the temporary, uncomfortable silence.

“I stand by what I said. I would consider this your third strike, Dean Winchester.”

Cas isn’t up for any more conversation by that point, which he makes clear by huffing and turning his body more toward the window and staring out of it at the passing streets. Dean’s definitely a speeder, he notes, but he doesn’t complain about that this time. Anything to get him out of the car faster.

 

When they finally stop outside an apartment at the edge of town, Cas is the first one out of the car. He has to wait for Dean to get out and lead the way, of course, but he feels better just being in the fresh air. Awkward moments are bad enough when you’re not someone who can physically _feel_ them deep in your core, he’d guess, but he’s never had the luxury of not experiencing things that way. What he really needs is to sit outside for a moment and gather himself, but there’s two glaring problems with that idea.

One, he’s damn near certain that Dean wouldn’t let him out of his sight at the moment, and two, his bleeding really isn’t slowing down and he needs that needle as soon as he can get it.

He follows after Dean, Sam always walking within a step or two of himself as they approach one of the upstairs apartments and wait for Dean to unlock the door. There’s two locks, which doesn’t surprise him. Hunters are a paranoid people who will take every trivial step to stop or delay a potential threat, even if it’s imaginary.

In all fairness, given that he’s just been attacked by an actual demon, maybe Cas should be a bit more careful as well. Increase his warding, at least.

Once inside, Cas doesn’t bother waiting for instruction. He makes a beeline for the couch and sits down with a pained grunt, the first outward sign of his discomfort he’s let show. Salem takes advantage of the opening immediately and hops down to the floor to sniff around at his feet. He watches her with concern, but despite everything that’s happening, he doesn’t think Dean would literally go after a defenseless kitten. Probably.

Not long after he’s sat himself down on the couch, he spots Sam darting out of the room. Whether to escape the situation or to grab supplies, he’s not sure, but he hopes it’s the latter.

Cas can feel Dean’s eyes on him, but that doesn’t stop him from unzipping his bloodied sweatshirt and removing it from his body. He’s never been one for modesty in that sense, and besides, he’s been using the summer to his advantage and built up a little more. It wouldn’t hurt for Dean to see a little of what he’s been missing.

 Once the sweatshirt is off, he folds it as best as he can, trying to keep the soaked parts on the inside so he doesn’t stain anything, and sets it aside. Thankfully, the couch is leather, so whatever rubs off the hoodie could probably be wiped off later.

He’s not entirely sure why he gives a shit about Dean Winchester’s couch just now, but he also doesn’t have the time to stop and wonder about that. He just keeps going, carefully removing his shirt. A loose string catches at his wound and pulls, causing him to suck air through his teeth in a pained gasp. Dean comes rushing over at that, as if to help him remove the shirt, but Cas is so not doing that right now, so he swats Dean away with a warning look.

“I can do it,” he insists, though his face is paled now that the last bits of adrenaline have been used up, replaced only with a sharp sting in his chest and straight-up exhaustion. Dean steps back reluctantly, sticking his hands up in mock surrender.

Carefully, Cas finishes removing his shirt. This time, he just balls it up and leaves it on top of the sweatshirt, no longer concerned with anything but getting his stitches. He’d just fix the problem himself, but healing takes much more energy than he has right now. He needs Dean for this.

He leans back against the couch and watches as Sam scurries back into the room with a bottle of alcohol in one hand and a small kit in the other. When the younger boy sets the supplies down on the couch, Cas can’t help but roll his eyes. Dental floss, a sewing needle, and normal scissors. Great. They look clean, at least. An infection is the last thing he needs.

As soon as he drops off the supplies, Sam disappears again. This time, Cas is pretty sure he sees the kid heading into the kitchen, and he half-hopes he’ll be able to get something to eat by the end of all this. His stomach is rumbling, and he’s not exactly sure when the last time he ate was. It’s been a long, long day.

He expects Dean to sit down and get to work right away, but instead, he sees the other reaching for something on his back belt loop, presumably hidden by his coat.

“Handcuffs?” Cas scoffs, staring at Dean in disbelief. “No. No way, Winchester.”

“Wasn’t asking,” Dean grunts, but his words don’t match the uncertainty Cas can feel coming off him in waves. He has to give the guy credit, though, he’s a good actor. His posture, his tone, everything suggests that he’s a cold, hard hunter who would do whatever it takes to take down a big bad. And maybe he would, but Cas isn’t fully convinced that Dean truly believes him to be a threat.

Either way, Dean is determined to not take any chances, and the next thing Cas knows, his wrist is cuffed to the side table at an angle that his shoulder is less than pleased with.

“This is ridiculous. You know—“

“I don’t _know_ anything except the fact that you just walked out of an alley covered in blood and stinking like something that crawled straight out of Hell.”

Cas narrows his eyes, starting to get seriously offended by all of the accusations. He has to force himself to sit still because Dean is sitting down and starting to clean the stitching kit with the alcohol, which Cas now sees is a bottle of strong vodka, but he kind of wants to punch something.

In place of the violence, Cas reaches out and grabs the bottle. He downs half of it in one go, and he’d love to keep going if it wasn’t the same bottle that was hopefully going to save him from dealing with an infection later. Those bastards were tricky to heal, never quite knew how far they’d reached, and it could end up wasting a lot of magic.

Dean gives him a look, though Cas shrugs it off. “I think I deserve a little alcohol after all of these dramatics,” he insists matter-of-factly.

“A little?” Dean repeats, setting it out of Cas’s reach for the time being (but not without taking a pull from it himself, Cas notices). “You drank half my damn vodka.”

The witch shrugs, leveling Dean with a look that says ‘you set yourself up for what’s coming next’. “You know I can hold my alcohol. Kind of the premise of our first date, sweetheart,” he says, the slight burn of alcohol in his chest pushing him past the point of putting things lightly. “Well, if you could call it a date. It ended pretty poorly. Half-expected you to walk me home.” He pouts, and the fact that Dean looks away for a moment is enough for him to feel satisfied.

The satisfaction dies quickly, however, and he almost wants to apologize for jabbing at old wounds again. While he probably has a right to do just that, it makes him feel like he did something wrong.

Fuck.

“Sorry,” he rushes out, unable to stop himself. “I’m just. That was kind of shitty, and then running into you this morning, and now…it’s a lot. But I guess it’s not your fault you wish you never met me, or whatever.”

Dean’s quiet for a while, busying himself by pouring some of the alcohol on a cloth and dabbing at Cas’s chest to clean it and get some of the blood out of the way. It stings like a bitch, and before Cas knows it, his free hand is shooting out and grabbing at the nearest object.

Which, of course, is one of Dean’s hands.

Good job, Cas, he thinks to himself. He pulls away as quickly as he can, but Dean stops him by holding onto his hand like a vice. Confused, Cas brings blue eyes up to stare at Dean, his brow furrowed deeply.

“Dean—“

“Shut up. Just, shut up for a second, would you?” Dean huffs, though Cas doesn’t hear any real malice in the words. It seems Dean’s more exasperated than anything else.

Cas waits, wondering where exactly this is going. It feels like an eternity of nothing but the sounds of the air conditioning and his own labored breathing, but finally, Dean continues.

“Look, when…all that shit happened, I didn’t exactly _plan_ it that way, okay? I’m not gonna blame the alcohol or whatever, it’s not that. It’s just. I wanted a good time, and I got it, but once the high from that died down, I totally freaked,” Dean explains, stopping abruptly. Cas feels like there’s more to it, but maybe that’s the most Dean can face at one time. Instead of going on, Dean is furiously cleaning at Cas’s wound again, as if he wants to look anywhere but at Cas’s face.

“I figured as much. The ‘freaking’ part,” Cas replies, his tone softer than it had been a few moments prior. “Earlier today, I—“ Fuck. He what? Used his magic subconsciously to read Dean’s emotions that morning, and by said means drew the conclusion that Dean was ashamed of the pure fact that he’d had sex with Cas? Yeah. Maybe not the best thing to address just then. “The note, I guess. I mean. Ditching out before sunrise, leaving a vague note. Kind of screams ‘freakout’.”

Dean nods, and Cas is thankful that he’s buying it for now. He knows he might end up having to explain himself later, which is definitely not something he’s looking forward to, but the crisis has been averted for the time being.

“I’d just like to know why. If it’s because it’s _me_ , and I’m…taboo or something, or something I did, or what.”

Dean doesn’t answer. By now, he’s threading the needle with intense concentration. Probably more than is strictly necessary.

“We’ll talk about this later,” he mutters. Cas’s expression must suggest just how much he doubts that, so he tacks on a deadpan “ _really.”_

Cas reluctantly lets it drop, partially because he’s pretty sure he won’t be able to converse while he’s being stitched up. He knows it’s going to hurt like a bitch. Fortunately, aside from adjusting so he could better level himself, Dean hasn’t moved their hands. He’s still letting Cas hold on—more than that, he’s holding on as well, which Cas takes as permission to squeeze as much as he has to.

And boy, he does. Every stitch hurts like a motherfucker, and it doesn’t help that there’s multiple wounds crossing his chest, so every time the thread is cut and tied off his brain fruitlessly hopes that it’s over, only for it to start all over again.

Finally, after what can’t have been too long but feels like eternity, Dean ties off the final thread and Cas lets out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. He’s pretty sure he’s left some deep fingernail imprints in Dean’s hand, and his bottom lip is bleeding a little from biting down on it too hard, but he’s relatively okay. Not bleeding everywhere anymore, at the very least.

“Fucking demon,” he pants, before he can stop himself. He realizes what he said just a little too late, and looks up to see Dean’s shocked expression matching his own quite well. “Well. Guess that cat’s out of the bag.”

Speaking of cats, Cas is suddenly very interested in finding Salem. He can’t get up from the couch because of the handcuffs locked around one wrist, but he stares intently around the living room as if it was the most interesting thing in the world at that moment. He stops his kitten, but she’s on the other side of the room, hiding beside the television stand and pawing at a few hanging wires. Great.

“Demon?” Dean repeats, now facing the confirmation that Cas at least knows something of what went down in that alley. Not that any of the signs had been pointing to him being an innocent civilian by that point, but he’d had an irrational hope that Cas had never been exposed to the supernatural. That bubble got popped pretty damn fast.

Cas sighs, reluctantly releasing Dean’s hand at last and using it instead to run restlessly through his mussed-up hair. “His name’s Azazel. He’s…he wants something. And he thinks I can help him with said something, whatever it is.”

“So, the blood…”

“All mine. I mean, you can’t seriously think I’d hurt anyone, Dean?” Cas prompts, the statement coming out as more of a question, because suddenly he’s unsure. His treatment since being found by the alley hasn’t done much to make him feel confident in Dean’s perception of him.

Dean shrugs helplessly, a guilty hint of a smile crossing over his features. “Kind of in the job description. Everyone’s a suspect. What does he want, anyway?” he asks, changing the subject as quickly as possible.

“A person. I don’t know who, some bullshit about someone being in his way, I don’t know. I didn’t listen. I banished him first chance I got, but it took a lot out of me. He’s a pretty high-level hellspawn,” Cas mutters, his distaste for the demon showing so clearly that even Dean can’t tell himself that this is a lie anymore. Whatever Cas’s relationship with the demon is, Dean has a feeling this isn’t the first time they’ve met, but it doesn’t exactly seem like a business partnership, either.

“Wait, what d’you mean, took a lot out of you? And you know something that can banish someone that high up? Most sigils can’t…”

“Took a lot of magic, Dean,” Cas replies, before he can be hit with any more questions. “My magic.”

“Your—your magic,” Dean repeats, subconsciously scooting away a little so that there’s more space between them on the couch. “And by that, you mean…?”

“I’m a witch, Dean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, feel free to come talk to me @ inkstainedcas on tumblr, it's not my main blog but I check in whenever I can and my ask is always open! and again, kudos/comments appreciated ♥


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter is a little shorter than I had originally planned bc I chopped a part off the end that will be used to open the next chapter instead, reason being because I've been absolutely swamped w/ college and work but I didn't want anyone thinking I'd forgotten about this story!! So I'm posting what I have now to tide everyone over, and hopefully chapter 6 will be 4k or more :)

“You’re a _what?_ ”

At the response, Castiel cocks his head, eyeing Dean with something akin to concern. He’d just said what he was, had he not?

“A…a witch, Dean,” he repeats, more slowly this time.

The other rolls his eyes, and Cas has a distinct feeling that he’s missing something, although he’d just been answering the question.

“Yeah, smartass, I know. I caught that part. I just…what?”

“Well, you asked what I meant by the phrase ‘my magic’, so I—”

“Jesus,” Dean huffs, and it comes out a little more harshly than he intended. He flinches a little, but he doesn’t take it back. He’s too distracted. Suddenly full of restless energy, he gets up and wanders around, circling around the couch like an especially distressed hawk.

Cas stays silent, not sure what he’s supposed to say. His explanations of the now-obvious didn’t seem to please Dean, and even he knows that the best plan of action for an outed witch is to _not_ piss off the hunter who has him handcuffed. Regardless of whether or not they’d previously fucked each other, though he really thinks that should mean _something_.

 Finally, Dean stops behind the couch, forcing himself to stay put for a second. He leans over the back of it, just a couple feet away from Cas as he eyes the supposed witch. “So, what? You born a freak, or did you make a deal with whatever hellspawn you were cozying up with in the alley one day?”

It’s Cas’s turn to flinch, and it’s not easy to miss. As soon as the word _freak_ drops out of Dean’s mouth, the hunter regrets it. It’s not that he doesn’t really think witches are freaks, because, well, they are. At least to him. But the hurt that flashed over Cas’s face wasn’t worth the brief satisfaction of spitting out the word.

“I didn’t mean—” he starts to backtrack, uncertain.

“Yes, you did.”

The words are firm, and Dean really doesn’t like the steely tone of them. He’s crossed a line. Whether it was the word itself or the accusations, Dean’s really upset Cas this time.

A few moments pass in silence, Dean waiting for Cas to fill it. Cas, for his part, is overwhelmed. He can feel the regret rolling off of Dean, but he doesn’t care. He’d said it, and he’d meant it, whether or not he was glad he admitted it aloud.

It stung.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Cas murmurs, feeling himself shutting down. With the negativity pressing between them now, he’s beginning to feel almost claustrophobic. He can’t escape it. He can’t even leave the room, because of the cuffs, and his cat has disappeared from sight, and…and…

And everything is too much. He can’t do this right now. His mind is already clogged with worries about Azazel. He should probably warn his brothers or _someone_ that the thing is back, but then again, he seemed to want Cas specifically. That doesn’t make him feel any better.

“Let me go,” Cas finally whispers. He looks up to Dean, blue eyes cold on the surface, but when Dean meets them for long enough, he sees everything else that’s hiding there.

“I can’t do that.”

Dean looks away, eyes dropping from Cas’s gaze. Cas doesn’t need his magic to detect the uncertainty radiating from Dean, though his jaw is set, fighting some internal battle.

“You can’t just keep me here forever.”

“I can keep you here until I figure out what the hell to do with you.”

There’s something in the tone of his voice that brings Cas’s mind to a screeching halt.

“Oh my god,” he says, rage and fear interlacing in his stomach, rising until he feels like the tendrils are choking him from the inside. “You’re seriously fucking considering—”

“You ain’t human,” Dean snaps back, growing defensive. His voice is raising too, though it does nothing to subdue Cas.

“Not human? _Not human?_ This isn’t my fault! Even if it was some mutation, none of this has anything to do with me. My dumbass ancestor sacrificing part of his lineage for power before they’re even born yet isn’t my fault, Azazel’s sadistic bullshit isn’t my fault. And you…you…”

He feels his hands heating up, his magic automatically fueled by the adrenaline and anger suddenly rushing through him. The cuffs had been keeping a lid on his magic, so to speak, because they’re apparently pure silver and randomly sigiled (probably the default, in hopes that one of them would work on whatever Dean may be trying to lock down), but they’re no match for his full power.

A pressure builds up in his chest and flows through his arms, his messy hair flowing slightly with the energy in the room. Salem peeks out from behind the TV stand, watching the scene with a cautious curiosity, but Cas doesn’t even notice her at first. His eyes are locked on the cuffs, specifically the one that had been attached to his wrist. It’s mostly melted, now hanging uselessly off the notched leg of the end table.

Cas swallows hard as he begins to calm down, his eyes finding Dean. He has to get out of there. The hunter—and that’s how Cas has to think of him, if he wants to get out of this, he thinks to himself—is frozen for now, awestruck, but he knows that won’t last for long. He also knows that his little display won’t have done anything to diffuse the tension between them.

Cas gets up and takes a few long strides across the room to scoop up his cat, his bloodied shirt and hoodie still laying on the couch. He doesn’t bother trying to take them back. That would mean stepping back in toward Dean.

“Leave me alone,” the witch warns flatly. “I’m not going to fight you, because I’m hoping that you’ll come to your senses eventually and figure out that I’m in no way the biggest threat in this town. But if you intentionally come after me…”

He feels a shift in the presence around him and turns slightly, to see where Sam Winchester has emerged from the hallway. He’s probably been eavesdropping for a while, but Cas was so focused on Dean that he didn’t notice a thing. The boy is wide-eyed, apparently torn. Based on his behavior earlier, he probably has no personal vendetta against Castiel, but Cas would bet that he would defend his older brother if it came down to it.

Cas doesn’t finish his threat. Instead, he looks Sam dead in the eye and says, “I’m sorry.”

It’s vague, but the boy nods in a way that tells Cas he understood. Sorry for bringing chaos to their night. Sorry for likely putting Dean in a sour mood for the next several days. Sorry for whatever may happen down the road, should Dean come after him. A blanket apology, but a sincere one.

The witch turns his back on both of the speechless brothers and strides out the door, which opens without him ever touching it. He doesn’t look back, but the slamming of the door behind him was no accident.

 

 

“What the hell, man?”

It’s Sam’s voice, which startles Dean out of his temporary trance.

“What’re you yelling at me for?” he huffs, already frustrated. Every instinct, every rule of hunting that’s been drilled into his mind since he was a practical toddler is screaming at him to run after Castiel, but he doesn’t. Not this time.

“Because you’re an idiot.”

Sam’s trudging over to the couch already, gathering the clothes laying there up in his arms. Dean watches on, brows knitted together in confusion.

“Me? He’s the one who fuckin’—”

“I don’t care what he did. Less than two hours ago, you’re sitting in the diner whining about how you think he’s avoiding you, and now you’re threatening to kill the guy? What’s wrong with you?” Sam demands, his voice cracking slightly with the strain of lecturing his older brother. “In case you already forgot, it was him who got injured earlier. Him you just sat here and stitched up. And then you find out he’s not a ‘normal human’ and you’re half-ready to shoot him?”

There’s a long stretch of silence, in which Dean is starting pointedly at the ground. His boot scuffs at the worn carpet, the only real sound in the room apart from both of their heavy breathing. “I never said I was gonna shoot ‘im.”

Sam stares at him in disbelief. He manages a shake of his head as he hurries toward the door. “You didn’t have to say it. He knew. So much for caring about the guy, Dean.”

With that, Sam’s out the door and rushing to the stairwell at the end of the hall in hopes of catching up with Castiel.

 

 

 

He knows he could’ve been nicer on his big brother. In fact, he’s already mentally planning the awkward apology he’ll have to offer him later, but for now, he wants to seethe for a little while longer.

Sure, Sam doesn’t know Castiel incredibly well, but he can’t imagine he’s _that_ bad of a guy. If he wanted to hurt Dean, wouldn’t he have done it when his brother was vulnerable? Like when they were…

Sam shudders a little bit. _Having sex._

Gross. Dean should never have sex.

He shakes the thoughts off, hurriedly scuffing his way down the dusty apartment stairs and pushing out the door at the bottom. He glances around worriedly, but it’s not hard to spot the shirtless guy with stitches on his chest and a fucking kitten perched on his shoulder wandering down the street.

Okay, yeah. So maybe the guy’s a little weird. He’s still nice.

Hopefully.

Sam decides to give him the benefit of the doubt, at the very least. He jogs to catch up with him, the clothes still clutched against his chest. The shirt’s ruined, for sure, but he thinks the jacket might be salvageable. He wouldn’t want Cas to lose it for good if it was his favorite or something.

“Hey,” he pants as he catches up, tensing a little bit when Cas stops dead in his tracks. Even though Sam would exhaust any other possibilities before trying to hurt the guy, he’s still a hunter, too (willingly or not). He has to remember that Cas still has the power to be incredibly dangerous, if he chose to be.

“What do you want?” Cas asks as he turns around, though he almost immediately sighs at his own tone of voice. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Sam, I don’t want to put you in the middle of this. I’m just…”

“Really pissed?” Sam guesses, a smile quirking at the edge of his lips.

Cas smiles back. He can’t help it. Sam feels so…genuine. Much more straightforward than his brother; possibly because of his younger age, or possibly because he has a clear set of morals in him. Cas has yet to sense conflict in the boy, whereas Dean is a walking contradiction whenever Cas has been around him.

“You could say that. But I was going to say ‘tired’. It’s a bit less harsh,” he muses.

“Probably less accurate, though,” Sam points out with a light shrug. “Anyway. Just wanted to give you your stuff. And, um. Say sorry.”

Cas eyes the clothing for a second, but he nods and accepts it with a murmured thanks.

“Sorry?” he repeats, once the word has had a chance to process. “What are you sorry for?”

Sam pauses, apparently considering the answer himself. “For having a dumbass for a brother. He means well, he’s just…he’s Dean.”

“I’m gathering that.” Cas smiles tightly, too tired to force a convincing one, though he does appreciate Sam’s efforts.

“Right, yeah. Well, usually he’s not _this_ bad, but I’ll bet he’s real mad at himself for crushin’ on a witch,” Sam muses aloud. He catches himself a moment later, but his eyes only go wide for a second before he gives a shameless shrug in a way that says _well, it’s true_.

Cas has already started to turn away so he can be on his way, but Sam’s words stop him in his tracks once more. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Dean. He’s been all worried that you hate him or something, and he talks about you, like, all the time. It’s kind of annoying. No offense. Isn’t personal.”

Cas would probably smile at Sam’s honesty, were he not so distracted by the matter at hand. “Just because he talks about me doesn’t mean…”

“Yeah, it does. Trust me. Anyway, don’t worry about it. I’ll try to keep him under control or whatever. He’ll leave you alone.”

“Right…yeah,” Cas mutters distractedly. His gut has been aching ever since he thought Dean planned to hurt him, but now there’s some relief. As if something that was wrong had been righted again. There’s too much weird shit happening tonight. Cas has to go. “I’ll see you around, Sam.”

He turns to leave as soon as the words are out of his mouth. He needs to figure out what the hell is going on.

 

 

                Cas makes a beeline for home as soon as he flees the conversation with Sam, craving a hot shower and the comfort of his bed after everything that’s gone down that day.

Back at his apartment, he sets Salem down by her food bowl and re-wards the entire place. He checks on every salt line and draws back over every sigil he has, making sure that Azazel can’t get in. Not easily, anyway.

He feels better once that’s done, but he still needs that shower. He drops his dirtied jacket in the wash and lets the bloodied shirt fall in the trash can on the way, feeling better with each minor task accomplished. It feels like he’s shedding off the stress, at least, piece by piece.

He trudges slowly to the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes behind him that he tells himself he’ll pick up in the morning. Discarded socks and rumpled jeans lead the way to the bathroom door, which gets shut and locked out of instinct.

Immediately, Cas goes for the shower and turns the water on. He doesn’t even wait long for it to heat up before he’s climbing in, the first trails of steam just beginning to rise from the shower floor, on their way to fog up the bathroom mirror.

He can’t stop thinking about Dean. There’s a specific image of him in his head. Not the Dean holding a gun on him in the alley, or the Dean he’d stormed out on. Not even of the night they’d slept together.

No, it’s the image of Dean sitting on his own couch with Cas’s hand in his own, stitching his wounds so carefully. Like he cared about keeping Cas out of pain. Like Cas _mattered_ , like…

His thoughts are shattered by a splitting pain on his back, near his right shoulder blade. He gasps and reaches for it with his left hand, grasping at it as if he can stop the pain by doing so. He glances around wildly, searching for threats, but there are none. He’s alone, dropping to his knees in the shower. It burns, like he’s being fucking branded.

As soon as it had come, it’s over. The pain ends, leaving only the memory of it behind.

Cas slowly drags himself back up, using the shower handles to steady himself as he stumbles out of the shower and toward the mirror. He quickly wipes a patch of fog off with his hand and twists around so he can see his back, squinting through the misty air of the warm bathroom.

What he sees there does nothing to ease his nerves. There's something like a tattoo decorating his right shoulder blade, the design small and unknown. The pattern is one he's never seen, but somehow he knows it's old magic. He worries briefly, wondering if Azazel had one of his goons hide a hex bag in Castiel's home before he reinforced the protection around it, but it doesn't  _feel_ cursed, or even unnatural. It feels more like an extension of himself that had been hiding just beneath the surface for far too long, and had finally dug itself out.

It feels binding. It's connected to someone, he can feel it, but as to who or why...

His phone rings from where it rests on the bathroom counter. He answers it, praying whoever it is has answers and not a telemarketing spiel.

It's Dean's voice on the other end. He sounds panicked, and staring in the mirror, Cas can only wonder if Dean's seeing the same thing he is.

“ _What the fuck, Cas_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, kudos and comments appreciated! & I can be found at inkstainedcas on tumblr but replies may be slow there bc it's not my main blog ♥


End file.
